DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: Y-20 Heavy Lifter Aircraft To Boost Military Capabilities

DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS:  Y-20 Heavy Lifter Aircraft To Boost Military Capabilities
**The Y-20 aircraft is part of the PLA's plans to modernise its hardware, but engine problems continue to hinder its successful development

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Minnie Chan - SCMP
(NSI News Source Info) HONG KONG - December 4, 2014: The development of the Y-20 heavy transport aircraft will benefit the military and civilian aviation industries if engine problems can be overcome, military experts said.

Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun confirmed last week it is developing the Y-20 military transport aircraft as part of the People's Liberation Army's modernisation drive and for service in humanitarian and disaster-relief efforts.

Three days earlier, on December 24, several photographs believed to be showing China's first domestically produced heavy-lift military transport plane were posted on a mainland website by military enthusiasts. The aircraft bears a striking resemblance to the US Air Force's C-17 transporter, built by Boeing, but appears to be of a size that might fit somewhere between the C-17 and the Airbus A400M.

As such, it appears that the Y-20 will be wide enough to accommodate most large PLA combat and support vehicles, including its Type 99 series tanks, which weigh close to 55 tonnes.

Yang did not say when the Y-20 would be ready for service, only saying that "the research and development of the large transport aircraft is going forward as planned".

The photographs on the Chaoda Story Land website, a forum for military enthusiasts, were purportedly taken from long range at Xian Aircraft's Yanliang airfield in Shaanxi .

Xian Aircraft Industry is a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the leading military aircraft maker.

Some features of the new transporter can be identified despite the poor quality of the images. It is powered by four jet engines that appear to be Russian Soloviev D-30KU engines, used on Russian Ilyushin Il-62M and Tupolev TU-154M airliners and the Ilyushin Il-76MD, a multi-purpose, four-engine strategic airlifter.

The PLA Air Force operates a small fleet of Russian-made Il-76 transporters powered by the D-30KU engine.

But Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canadian-based Kanwa Defence Review, said the Y-20 would not use D-30KU engines when development and research was completed.

He said the D-30KU was a noisy fuel-guzzler and even the Russians were abandoning it. China was likely to use a homegrown aircraft engine such as the CJ-1000A displayed at the Zhuhai air show in November, he said.

"I have no idea about the Chinese engines that will be used by the Y-20 as it is still being developed," Chang said. "But it will be a significant jump for China's aviation industry if it successfully develops the Y-20, especially for its larger aircraft projects which can be used for both military and civilian purposes."

Beijing-based military expert Li Jie said the Y-20 project was still in its early days.


"Like other aircraft projects, the Y-20 project is still facing the same problem - engines," he said. "But if we overcome such a knotty problem, the PLA's ability to project military force on the battlefield or send relief materials to disaster-hit areas would definitely be strengthened."

*Related Y-20 Heavy Lifter Aircraft Images;

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Minnie Chan SCMP
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DTN News: Iran Plane Slams Into Perimeter Wall Killing 17

DTN News: Iran Plane Slams Into Perimeter Wall Killing 17

*Source: DTN News / AFP

(NSI News Source Info) TEHRAN, Iran - July 25, 2009: An Iranian airliner overshot the runway and slammed into a perimeter wall killing 17 people in the second city of Mashhad on Friday in the country's second air disaster in 10 days, state media said. An image grab taken from Iran's satellite English-language official Press TV station shows the wreckage of a plane. "There was an accident and a fire involving a passenger plane from Tehran to Mashhad that has left 17 people dead and 19 injured," the official IRNA news agency reported, quoting the deputy governor of Khorasan province, Ghahreman Rashid. Rashid identified the plane as a Russian-designed Ilyushin and said it carried 153 passengers. "All the dead and injured people and passengers have been evacuated and the fire has been completely controlled," Rashid said, according to IRNA. A senior transport official said the incoming aircraft had overshot the runway. "Instead of landing at the beginning of the tarmac, the plane landed in the middle of the runway," the ISNA news agency quoted deputy transport minister Ahmad Majidi as saying. "Because the tarmac?s length is short, it has gone off the tarmac and crashed into the opposite wall. "The Ilyushin 62 belonged to the Aria Airline," Majidi added referring to an independent Iranian carrier. The Mehr news agency said the plane crashed through the airport's perimeter wall before hitting power lines and coming to a halt in adjacent farmland. State television said that the accident occurred as the plane was landing at the international airport in Mashhad, a popular Shiite Muslim pilgrimage centre in northeastern Iran. "The plane... had a technical glitch," state television said quoting the director of the public relations department at Mashhad's Hashemi Najad airport, who was identified only by his surname Pirhandeh. The television's website quoted acting state aviation organisation director, Mohammad Ali Ilkhani, as saying that the plane had "swerved off the tarmac at Mashhad airport as it landed, before crashing nose-first into one of the airport?s walls." It was the second reported major incident in the past decade involving the Iranian carrier formerly known as Aria Air Tour. On November 13, 2000, a Russian-designed Yakovlev aircraft linking the southern Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Bandar Abbas was briefly hijacked before elite Revolutionary Guards intervened freeing the passengers at the cost of one crew member and two Guards wounded, according to a report by US carrier American Airlines on criminal acts against civil aviation. Friday's crash was the second deadly accident involving an Iranian airliner since July 15 when a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 on board. That accident occurred shortly after takeoff from Tehran's international Imam Khomeini airport on its way to the Armenian capital, Yerevan. The plane caught fire in mid-air and plunged into farmland outside a village in northwest Iran just 16 minutes after take-off, killing all 153 passengers and 15 crew members on board. Iran, which has been under years of international sanctions hampering its ability to buy modern Boeing or Airbus planes, has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade. Its civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance. In the most deadly previous crash, 117 people on board another Russian-designed aircraft, a Tupolev, were killed when it crashed into snow-covered mountains in western Iran in 2002. The Iranian crash earlier this month marked one of the deadliest series of crashes in many year. It came just two weeks after a Yemenia Airbus A310 crashed in the Indian Ocean off the Comoros with 153 passengers and crew on board, with only one survivor. That incident occurred just 29 days after the crash of an Air France A330, killing 228.